LEGO Art 31214 Love Sign now rumoured to be another MoMA set

Next year’s rumoured LEGO Art 31214 Love Sign is now said to be hooked to a famous work associated with the Museum of Modern Art.

While initial assumptions around the rumoured set pointed to something closer to the ‘live, laugh, love’ wheelhouse, maxbautde now reports that 31214 will actually be based on American artist Robert Indiana’s pop art image. Indiana originally created the image in 1964, and in 1965 submitted several variations of the work – which places the letters ‘L’ and ‘O’ above ‘V’ and ‘E’ in bold Didone font – for the Museum of Modern Art’s annual Christmas card.

MoMA chose the artist’s boldest colour combo of red, blue and green, and a screen printing of that image has since been immortalised in the museum’s permanent collection. A larger oil painting hangs in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which also counts Indiana’s first steel LOVE sculpture among its collection. Large sculptures of the artwork can be found on the streets of New York City and Indiana, alongside other variations around the world.

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According to art historian Susan Elizabeth Ryan, the work was at one point a different, ‘more explicit four-letter word’ – but LOVE as an arrangement can be traced all the way back to 1958, in a series of poems written by Indiana. It’s now probably the most iconic interpretation of that word in the art world, having also been printed on more than 425 million stamps by the US Postal Service in the mid-‘70s.

It’s something a little different again for the LEGO Art theme, which has pivoted this way and that plenty of times in its relatively short lifespan. And it would be a second LEGO set associated with the Museum of Modern Art following 2022's 21333 Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night, though whether it would be branded as such is less clear at this point.

31214 Love Sign is still rumoured to include 791 pieces, retail for $79.99 / €79.99 and land on shelves January 1. It’s one of four LEGO Art sets currently said to be launching in 2025.